I do not like it, Sam I Am

I do not LIKE April Fool's Day with ham. Or any other meat, or bread, or...

Aaaand that was really just a way to get the obligatory April Fool's Day nonsense out of the way. I suppose it is self-evident that as someone who thrives on routine and predictability, I would hate April Fool's Day pranks like the plague, but I still don't like being reminded that I am a dour and literal sourpuss.

Moving on. I will try not to think about how my poor mom is stuck alone at home with the kids on this potential-for-giddy-excess day (the kids' school district has managed to schedule Spring Break so that it covers April Fool's Day every year since we've been here. Coincidence? I think not...)

I'm beginning to settle into the new workspace, or more specifically, into the joy of being a shortish drive from work. Yesterday I rode my bike in, and although it was not the glorious exercise in joy that riding my bike to the old workspace was, the upside was that I wasn't toast by the end of the day. Six miles is pretty manageable. Yes, fine, I felt a bit like Ralph Nader as I rode my ancient, dusty bike through the Land O the Office Parks and Warehouses with my work pants tucked into my socks. But it felt like it could become a regular, if infrequent, part of my life. Once again I can be a bike commuter, with all the sweaty virtue that implies.

We're beginning to settle into the house space, too. It has been a blessed relief to give up on our irritating and needy contractor and just hire people who show up when promised, work hard, and finish the job with a minimum of fuss and drama (who knew? now we're wondering why the hell we stayed with the other guy for so long. Pity really isn't a viable business model, or shouldn't be). The trim, for example, was finished in a day. There are still unfinished spots, but we've brought out the furniture and arranged it as though things were done, and psychologically that makes a ton of difference. Plus: spring is nigh.

We finished up our ski season last weekend. Thank god. I'm all for skiing, which is good, considering how much time and resources we direct to the industry, but man, it's nice to have weekends back without the guilt of feeling like we should be spending them driving into the mountains to do something that involves so much lugging of heavy, finger-pinching equipment, with the added bonus of the day possibly ending in death/ serious injury. On the last two runs of the day, Helen finally talked herself into letting go of my hand while she skiied the bunny slope (note: I bribed her), and skiied down the hill faster than I could keep up. That's my girl, I thought, grinning madly as I chased the little pink snowpants down to the lift.

So: that was March. M took the kids to the creek at the bottom of the hill (nature exposure: check), we watched the moon rise as a family (we drove to Cherry Creek Park on the night of the full moon, and it was touching and heartening to see what a popular activity this was, with cars and pedestrians lined up all along the roads on the west edge of the park) (moon rise: check), I went for a hike in the Greenland Open Space on my day off (hike for me: check), and I struggled mightily through one of the books on my bedside TBR pile (I'm going to have to give this one a fail. It's been two months now, and I'm still on the second chapter of book 2).

Leaping, plus updates

When the kids were little, I remember their development would come in spurts--one day they'd be serenely practicing their "ba" sounds, in long unrelated streams of babble, and the next they'd wake up and say "dog" and be making signs for "flower" and "please" and "MORE NOW." This still happens, only we call it "mood," as in, "Wow, Si's mood is terrific today! He cleaned his room without being asked and played with Helen and finished his homework lickity split." Helen had a growth moment over the weekend, and even though she gets embarrassed and shouts MOM DON'T SAY THAT whenever I praise her about it, I can't help myself. We had to go to the store on Saturday, and she offered to go if we could walk/ scooter (gasp) (this from the girl who two days before had a crying fit because I hadn't parked the car close enough to the school for her to roll from the Sock Hop to her carseat). So I said yes, of course, even though it was the main grocery trip and I'd have to lug home all the cereal boxes and milk jugs and etc. Then on the way home, after I'd had to stop for the eighteenth time to adjust the damn cereal boxes, which were spilling out onto the sidewalk, she spun back on her scooter and said, "Can I help? I can carry a bag."

"Oh, that's sweet of you," I said. "But these are really heavy."

"I can take one," she said decisively, like a 22-year-old. And holy mama, she did. She took the bag with the three-pound chicken and looped it over her scooter handlebars and off she went.

I upped her allowance, of course, even though all she asked for was brownie points (I'm aware of the unfortunate racist heritage of the term, but our kids naturally assume they're related to brownies, so I don't worry about it too much).

Updates: well, our contractor is finally our of jail (I do love saying this in answer to people's chipper questions about how the renovation is coming), but not for long, so we're trying to get him to finish as much as he can before he goes out of commission. Sigh. I feel bad for the guy, even though he brought the vast majority of his troubles upon himself.

Also, Kevlar was invented by a woman.

Men who cry

Good morning on this glorious wintry Monday. It's hard not to be in a good mood when the sun is out for the first time in a week. (Or so it seems, and I know that for my Midwestern contingent a week is NOTHING. Still: GLORIOUS.) Last week, with the cold and the snow and the wow-really-MORE? snow, it felt like everything was in hibernation. The kids had two snow days, one of which was for cold (WIMPS, that school district. WIMPS.) (Okay, the high WAS -1 and they were worried about buses not starting). M and I, on the other had, had business-as-usual days (ARGH), so the snow days were 48 hours of frantic scrambling. Our builder, too, seemed to be asleep--he was in a fender bender on his way to work on Monday, which was followed by 7 days of silence and complete non-progress on the house. We finally tracked him down at his mom's house. Apparently his girlfriend had broken up with him and kicked him out of their house. Sigh. We have a very....emotionally connected builder, which I appreciate on the good days but not so much on the weepy ones. On those days I am reminded of Nora Ephron's warning about men who cry: "they're sensitive to and in touch with feelings, but the only feelings they tend to be sensitive to and in touch with are their own."

Heh. In addition, our compassion is strained by also finding out last week, via a legal notice informing us that we're responsible (legally we are, it appears) for the unpaid bills to some of his subcontractors. LOVELY. I would be more distraught about this disturbing turn of events if a) the amount we're being requested for was larger and b) if I wasn't pretty confident that we could meet that debt by selling his damn stuff, which is still in our house. (Just kidding! that would be WRONG. As would some of the fantasies I entertained over the weekend of kidnapping him and not letting him leave our house until the trim was done). Anyway! It seems like he's come out of hibernation and will be coming to our house to face the wrath of M. I do not envy him.

In lighter news, Si's fourth grade class has begun their biography project. "Oh, who are you doing?" I asked with interest. Ben Franklin? Buzz Lightyear? Amelia Earhart?

"The man who invented the bulletproof vest."

Of course. One of the great minds of our times. I resisted sarcasm, however, and just said, "Oh! Great!" while making a serious effort not to sound like a pin had just punctured my mom balloon.

January progress

Today was the last night of skating lessons and I just must say that I have NEVER been so glad to see the end of lessons in my life. Between the frantic dash after work to get home, pick up the kids, eat something, stuff Helen into her snowpants and gloves (which usually entailed dragging said snowpants and gloves out of their hiding place in the winter clothes bag), and convince both kids that yes, the lessons were still on and YES, we really are going, yes, even you, now get GOING, I would start dreading it three days in advance and it would kind of mar my weekend.

On the plus side, between skating, basketball, and run of the mill busyness, January passed quickly by and here we are on the brink of February. It's time for a little assessment of the resolution situation. Let's see. I resolved to read a TBR book a month, watch a moonrise, take the kids to nature and eat more wild food.

Let's start with the wild food:

Berries of the Rocky Mountain juniper (Juniperus scopulorum) growing in our backyard (it TOTALLY counts.)

Pork roast studded with juniper berries.

Waiting to eat the pork roast. And the chocolate-pecan torte (mmmm). And the roasted potatoes and steamed carrots & snow peas. (Can you tell I'm a little happy to have a kitchen back?)

I'm not totally sure that I detected the flavor of juniper berries in the pork--I mean, basically it tasted like pork, right?--but oh, I felt downright self-sustaining and virulently virtuous, collecting the berries that were scattered in huge heaps in our yard (we have a very fecund juniper). Next I'm going to try roasting the berries and using them to infuse milk for ice cream. I'll let you know how that goes.

Book: I read Tender at the Bone. Okay, fine, it had been sitting on my TBR pile for all of about 14 days when I picked it up, but still: off the list. I have to admit that the book made me quizzically jealous--so, wait, she just sort of stumbled into this dreamy life as a food writer? In which she got to, say, decide on the spur of the moment to travel to France to learn about wines? Some essential piece of this puzzle seemed left out. Nevertheless, I enjoyed the book immensely, drooling as I read (lots of recipes).

Moon: well. January 15, the night of the full moon, was totally socked-in snowing. The next day Helen had her kindergarten program during the moon rise, and the days after that I sort of forgot (but did happen to be walking the dog shortly after the moon rise). Fun fact: the January full moon is called the Wolf Moon.

Nature: took the kids and a friend down to the creek at the bottom of the street. The friend fell in; Si and Helen also got suspiciously soaked. They also had to be dragged away from the creek, despite it being a) twenty degrees out; b) getting dark and c) a sopping-wet clothes situation. So I'll rate that one a success.

Next: February!

Ahh, the bowl fight

Yesterday our builder hooked up the kitchen faucet, which means that except for the really actually minor items like caulking and grout, the kitchen part of our house is D-O-N-E and we celebrated by baking a batch of cookies, which we haven't done since 1984. I mean, August. Helen was beside herself with chit-chattery excitement, spinning from mixing bowl to counter to oven and back again with a constant running commentary: "Aretheydoneyet?WhencanIlickthebowl? But Silas can't lick the bowl, right, because he wasn't here? What's that for? Are they done yet? Did you do the next batch? When you do the next one can I lick the bowl? Just me? I'm going to get a spoon. Just for licking, right, ma? What are these spoons for? Can I lick the spoon? But Silas can't, right? Are we going to have parties now? Whoa."

Meanwhile M and I were trying to have a conversation about how great it was to finally stand in the kitchen and have a conversation, Costi was trying to make the point that we hadn't fed her her after-dinner snack yet, and the birds (oh, the birds) were back in the living area, making their happy-to-be-here noises, and it was all so cheerful and noisy and warm that there was really no excuse for feeling tired and irritated, even though that's what I was mostly feeling.

Life is creeping back toward normal, in other words. Hurray. This was really brought home by the kids who, immediately after the celebration cookie baking, got into a fight over who got to lick the bowl (note: they BOTH get to lick the bowl. For Pete's sake.)

Update

Attention: we are now cooking with gas.

Still no sink, running water, or counters, but the end is in SIGHT.

From There to Here

We went from this:


and this:

To this:


And finally this:It felt like the range and scope of our lives, sometimes. Most of the time. But still, there was this:



We went from here
To here

And spent time here.



All in all, it wasn't bad, 2010.

Holiday interlude *edited to add pictures*

Merry Christmas, dear readers!

So much, of so little note, has happened since we last spoke. There have been birthdays! holidays! museum trips! family visiting! present purchasing! purchase regretting! present opening! There have been tantrums large and small, mostly from strung-out children, but also a few adults (okay, ME). Remarkably, the worst of the Christmas season has passed without any major family snarking. We are all still on speaking terms. The season has been good to us and ours. Dearly beloved people have come and gone, leaving the Melospiza household lonelier but less chaotic.

M and I, like the kids, had to make do with partially fulfilled wishes this season--we still have no kitchen, but on December 23 we got lights and power in the front half of our house and we quickly moved into Christmas Mode, hauling out the boxes of ornaments and nostalgia, stringing up lights, taking photos. We cleaned the trash out of the fireplace, drove nails into the 2x4 fireplace frame, and hung our stockings with care between the ShopVac and the table saw. We regifted some of our Christmas cookies to Santa and brought out rugs and pillows and camp chairs. We had a right jolly old Christmas morning. Then yesterday we took it all down again, in the hopes that the builders would come today as promised (as of a quarter to noon, no dice--our builders are like the bad boyfriend, the one who never calls and never quite gives you his full attention).

However, I am always telling the kids that unfulfilled desires build character. (THAT'S what you call this pain and resentment swelling within my head!) Really, I guess, it's how we respond to unfulfilled desires that build character, or perhaps that response is how our character reveals itself. Anyhow, my character, or that of my household, is less gracious and unflappable than I could wish.

Hmm. I sense a resolution brewing.

Grateful, Part 1

My to-do list for the weekend:


1. Make Silas take the floor lamp out of the treehouse;

2. Clear out the old tomato vines;

3. Clean the house (or what is cleanable, anyway).


Not bad, eh? (Also: success. My life is so much easier when I give myself to-do lists that are actually possible to accomplish.) (Although, as easy as Item # 2 seems, the years I actually manage to do this before it snows and the rotting garden becomes encased in ice for the duration of the winter are rare.)


In all it was a lazy weekend, by which I mean we had relatively few things scheduled and M could actually say to me "I'd just kind of like to do NOTHING for a while today" and he could actually do that. Sort of. The state of our lives right now meant that M got to "do nothing" only while playing North American Animal Memory with Helen and overseeing a noisy game of Spongebob Monopoly between Silas and his friend and that these activities took place in our bedroom.

(I was on a run, by the way. Later I got to "do nothing" while sorting laundry and gently reminding small people to please bring their toys back to their own rooms and also planning the meals for the week. I think I planned the meals, anyway. Somehow dinner still ended up being spaghettios, donuts, and store-prepared salad. I SWEAR I will get back to eating well, or well-er, when we have a kitchen. UGH.)

Well, it's Thanksgiving week. I was all set to do a daily post about the things I am thankful for, except that it turned out that enumerating online the things for which I am thankful was the mental equivalent of stating online that no one in the house has thrown up lately or that the kids aren't having sleep issues. In other words, I can't bring myself to do it for fear of the hex. So, instead, I will say: I am so, so very grateful. I am grateful that we are in a position that we could do something about the mold and the ants. I am grateful that we are able to go into debt with a reasonable hope of getting out of it again. I am grateful that I am able to think of money as something abstract, most of the time.

Inching

The past few weekends have devoted almost exclusively to Stuff Management, a term that will be familiar to anyone with children (or anyone with stuff, although children seem to cause an inordinate and staggering amount of it to pour into the house). Unpacking, sorting, organizing, discarding, and, oddly, repeating (it's like the stuff packs itself up while I'm not looking.) However, after this weekend I feel like we really, truly have Made It, and the stuff is in its place and will remain so for the time being. The doors are back on, the kids' rooms are in order, the summer clothes have been sorted and put away or given away, the hats and coats have been exhumed and put where we can both access them and put them away. Hooks are up. Curtains are up. It feels possible that we might be able to live uncomplicatedly for a while, or at least as uncomplicatedly as it is possible to live when the cooking activities are being conducted from the garage and half the house is still a barn.

In a lot of ways I like the coziness of our current arrangement. We all eat dinner in our bedroom; we watch movies together here, the kids do homework, and M dispiritedly works away on his laptop. Lately I've been preparing dinner here, too, bringing the vegetables and compost tub and only dashing out to adjust the heat on the hot plate when I absolutely have to. On Saturday night I fixed a salad while some tortellini cooked in garage, and then we ate it while watching Where the Wild Things Are. We do our arguing over money and contractors here, too, and it helps that the files, digital and paper, are all an arm's length away ("How much did that glider cost? Well, let's find out!") Well. It sort of helps. Sometimes it's a little too cozy. Also, I still manage to forget what I was going to do between walking to the computer to go look up the kids' online school lunch account and actually sitting down in front of it with my fingers ready.

We try to get out as much as we can, although that isn't always possible.


This weekend, though, I did get away for a little bit, to attend Jess's baby shower. I kind of love baby showers, even when I don't really know anybody, like at this one. I mean: babies. What's not to love? And it was lovely to meet so many other women, and eat some delicious food, and just generally sit around in someone else's house and not worry about my own, for a while.

Now with pictures

I hesitate to post these, since they seem so depressingly unchanged, but behold, our house after two months of renovation:

The kitchen will be to the right of that wall.

Our bipolar house. Half the time it's solid brick, the other half it's crazy window time.

This part looks better.

This part too, although I think the main attraction is external.

Here's Si's room. He doesn't really get why we're dragging our feet on the move-in.

The opposite of fall

For sundry and assorted reasons, none of which, unfortunately, have to do with moving back into the house (an event that remains depressingly lodged in the future), I have not felt up to posting. I still don't, really, but I am tired of staring "Doggy Bags" in the face every time I open up this blog.

In the blogless interim, however, I HAVE felt up to doing other things, including but not limited to:

1. Sanding down assorted bedroom doors. Our house has very nice, solid wood doors. The previous owner had very anxious, insistent dogs that were often closed into the bedrooms. Need I say more? There's a delicious feeling of exorcising the last of the house demons as I rub those scratch marks into oblivion.

2. Celebrating our 14th anniversary at Rioja, one of those fancy downtown restaurants whose menus read like short stories involving collisions of luxury ingredients (Alaska-caught halibut in an Earl Gray-Tarragon reduction with lemon cream fraiche and a fig tartlet) (which was delicious). Pretentious, yet mmmmm.

3. Receiving rather handsome T-shirts from our builder (although the shirts have the alarming motto "It's not our fault!" written on the back). I'm hoping this isn't one of those "I took out a second mortgage and moved out of my home and all I got was this lousy T-shirt" situations.

4. Finishing the fall baseball season with Silas (thank GOD. No more long haul missions to distant fields.)

5. Finishing untold piles of homework with the same. Eegads, the HOMEWORK. It's more than I had in many college classes. The boy continues to soldier on, bravely and stoically, but sometimes it breaks my heart. M offers a refreshingly different perspective, however--he says that when he lived in Germany in fourth grade, his homework loads were similar. Weekdays were for doing homework, and only weekends were for playdates.

6. Being dazzled by the autumn colors. This happens every year. All year I remember, intellectually, that autumn is very pretty, and then every year I amazed again at the incandescent yellows, the burning reds, the glittering grasses, the way a tepid vista of green and brown is suddenly spiced into brilliance, and everyday acts, like driving to pick up the kids or going for a disappointingly short run, become miracles of hope and beauty. (Why hope, though? I don't know.)

Doggy Bags

Everyday life is easier than it was two weeks ago, for which I am grateful. Nevertheless, the simple mechanics of daily life--particularly the mechanics of getting the kids out the door with the correct items each and every day--are pretty much absorbing my entire brain space right now. We have friends that we have not seen or contacted in weeks, for which I feel a pang every time I remember them. We have new friendships that were just beginning when we started work on the house, and these friendships have pretty much been shelved for the time being. Although I can't help but notice that other families with multiple children in sports (the only families we see currently, as they are sharers in our current all-consuming hobby of Getting the Kids Out the Door With the Correct Items) seem also to be completely absorbed in their daily mechanics with little room left for socializing or making new friends. And these people have functional kitchens. So I can't blame it all on the house.

However, I can blame one of my latest preoccupations on the house: the need to find and hold onto good doggy bags. Not the food kind. My MIL's house has no fence and no real turf space to call its own, which means that Costi needs to be leashed up, walked, and scooped at least twice a day. This activity involves a lot of poop bags, and I'm constantly fretting about running out. Especially since I don't actually take her on walks in places that provide bags (she's getting old, and prefers not to walk far, and while I suppose I could load her into the car and drive her to an open space nearby...well, see the paragraph above. The planets might align to allow such an activity maybe once a week, at best. Meanwhile, her intestines keep working.) So I'm always dashing out to get the company paper at work, so I can strip off the encasing plastic and stuff it in my pocket. I'm always furtively tugging doggy bags from the stands set up in the neighborhood walkways around my work. I'm always pausing in my predawn runs to pull a few bags from the trails in the neighborhoods beyond the golf course (this is complicated by the fact that I adhere to a doggy bag karma: use only what you need, so that when you really need it, bags will be there. So I can't stock up.)

See? Brain space.

Life on a Golf Course

It so happens that we are living on a golf course. This is funny in many ways, the funniest of which being the fact that none of us play golf in any way (except for mini golf. A few of us are very enthusiastic about mini golf. Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, we are not living on a mini golf course.) Even my MIL, whose house it is, does not play golf--which is a good thing, since, as you may know, golf is not cheap (not even when you live on a course, as it turns out), and living on a course you could not afford to play on would be awfully bitter.

However, there are a lot of things to like about living here. As the entrance gate swings shut behind you and you drive from the clubhouse to your house that is only a LITTLE bit like a dormitory room, the road swings up and over a lovely swell, with a great view to the east and west, over closely-shorn parkway, with a beautiful shaggy willow creek running through the middle. There's a pond, with cattails and ducks. All of the painfully tidy houses open onto green space (even if that green space is only about ten feet wide). It's very tranquil out here. Especially when all of the visiting grandkids have gone home. Ahem. It's very safe. And it's very...how shall I say this?...free from the sorts of aggravations that come with living in other, less regulated places. No loud music. No free-roaming cats. No unleashed dogs or uncleaned poo. No unsightly yards or driveways. The homeowners' regulations, coincidentally, read a bit like a list of somebody's pet peeves (one of the rules says that if you put a non-American flag in your flag-bracket [ALL of the houses have flag brackets], you must also have an American flag up, and the American flag needs to be on top).

So...pretty much the four of us (plus our frequently unleashed dog) stick out like a passel of unwelcome gypsies. Every time the gate closes behind me I glance furtively at the houses on either side and sink a little lower in my seat. Every time I run through the neighborhood on my morning jog I feel like an interloper, like I need to say loudly to everyone who cheerfuly greets me that we are ONLY here for really, a FEW more days, we should be GONE by next weekend, I SWEAR it.

And actually? This might be true. The hardwood is going down in our bedroom as I write. By this weekend we may be moving back in. Still no kitchen, but man. It will be nice to be home.

Misplaced Persons

I stop by the house three or four times a week--I water the plants, I pick tomatoes, I get the mail, I check on the progress of the floor/ framing/ etc. The kids come with me and get stuff from their rooms or they sit in the car and do homework or they hop around in the front yard, peering up and down the street for signs of their friends. I do this a little bit, too. Then I sigh wistfully and think how this was such a great neighborhood when we used to live here.

Then I remember: oh yeah, I still DO live here. Sort of.

After only a week and a half at my MIL's I feel like we've moved out. The house is so gritty and beat down that it is not at all a pleasant place to be (and oh, the yard, it is in a dreadful shape, white and baked and dry). But I miss being able to walk to the library and the store. I miss being five minutes from the kids' school. I miss my running routes. I miss talking to all the neighbors, even the ones who irk me just a little bit.

The house is progressing. The hall and bedrooms have black tarpaper down (I guess this is what they put between the subfloor and the floorboards.) The laundry room has hardiback subfloor, ready for tile. The front room is promisingly filled with bright new yellow lumber. Progress is on the horizon.

But meanwhile I wake every morning in a tidy white duplex on a golf course, go for a run beneath the stars, wave at the active 55s-and-over who wave back ever so slightly accusingly (aren't you and your children what we moved here to get AWAY from? uh, probably so.) I walk Costi on the lush green lawns and when I scoop her poop into the bags, as often as not a little crinkly crabapple leaf sneaks in too. It's starting to be fall, and I long to be home.

Officially Out

So, we spent the night at MIL's surprisingly spacious duplex last night, and let me just how relaxing it was NOT to come home to the house in its state of deconstruction. No dust, no odd smells, minimal arguing about what new problem cropped up today or what old problem needs to be fixed immediately. Supposedly the builders were at the house late into the night, sealing off vents and things; however, I was blissfully unaware of what they were or were not doing. I feel very rested this morning, and sort of Zenlike about the money stuff (for example, if all of our money is embedded in the house, no one can steal it! except that we could steal it from ourselves, by moving too soon or not replenishing...anyway, perhaps the Zenlike part is not thinking about it too hard).

Sleeping arrangements, at the MIL's: M and I in the (windowless) basement bedroom, which is amazingly dust free. Helen on a Helen-sized futon on the floor, with her water and her stuffed snoopies tucked under a towel beside her. Costi on the floor. Since she can't fit under the bed (that's where she prefers to sleep at home), she put her front paws and head under the bed. Silas, by adamant choice, is sleeping on a small futon in the unfinished basement storage room with his music, two (!) fans, and his stuffed dog.

So far, so good. M said when he and the builders pulled up the carpet in our bedroom there was a quarter-inch encrustation of dirt and mold under a pathway from the door to the bathroom. I'm beginning to think that carpets=many of our problems, esp. allergy-related problems. Thus, hardwood floors: attractive, and also a medical investment! Hopefully.

Maintaining the organism

I've been doing a lot lately of what I call maintaining the organism. Other people might call these coping strategies. Still other people might call this Giving Yourself a Whole Lot of Extra Work and Why Don't You Slow Down Already. But, here are some of the ways I'm trying to stay sane:

1. Exercise, but not too much. My big run on Sunday is only five miles and my weekly runs veer toward 2-and-a-half miles, which previously I didn't really consider a real run (three miles, though: THAT's real.) I walk more. While I've never been a real striver in the exercise department, I'm letting myself take it more easy than before.

2. Eat well, but allow more treats. There's nothing that restores the mind and body quite like a coffee milkshake, after all.

3. Fancy touches. I haven't yet started putting garnish on the dinner plates, but I feel like I'm putting in extra effort to make the dinner table, which is also the countertop and the dishwashing area, LOOK nice. This isn't my usual way. I've also been sweeping the back porch more, even though we hardly ever use it, since it's miles away through a grit-encrusted wasteland right now.

4. Packing ahead. My lunch, the kids' lunches, the kids' backpacks--sometimes I'll stay up until 10:30 getting everything ready for the next day/ week. I'm not sure how much grief this really saves in the morning, but it does help me feel more or less on top of and in touch with the kids' school lives.

5. Cleaning. I've become a bitchy bear about making everyone (ie the kids) clean the living space every night.

Does this stuff help? A little. A lot, actually, but it's of much less value when dealing with having to move everything into two rooms and seal them up. I spent all Sunday moving books, clothes, and boxes, and still, there is so much left to do, and nothing gets underway until we've finished--it's exhausting.

Positives: on Saturday our building guys tore out the nasty gritty allergenic carpet from the kids' rooms, and Si's room has a really beautiful hardwood finish (which he keeps firmly reminding us he wants to have covered up again with carpet as soon as possible). Helen's room also has hardwood, although not in as nice condition.

Also on Saturday, Helen and I drove up to Fort Collins and visited with an old friend who has a daughter Helen's age, and it was so nice, to just sit around drinking coffee, playing with her baby and talking. This is something that doesn't happen as much as it should in our new life.

Wormhole of Suck

So, we are entering the wormhole of suck phase of the renovation. Half the house is destroyed, entering or exiting the house involves either a) the garage door (which BROKE last weekend and had to be REPLACED even though it is two years old) or b) a dusty, gritty, possibly toxic tiptoe through a hanging sheet of plastic and the wrecked part of the house. Unpleasant, and although it has been only two weeks it feels like forever. Also, M is violently allergic to the drywall dust/ mold/ something growing outside and hasn't been able to sleep, breathe, see, or eat properly for about a month. Also, washing the dishes takes approximately 60 minutes every night. All yuck, but all relatively survivable (especially for me, since I'm not allergic). Then yesterday we got the results of the testing for a toxic substance that I'm reluctant to name publically (there are rumors that the local city will descend upon homeowners E.T.-style and temporarily condemn the house), but let's just say the substance is synonymous with 50s and 60s futuristic homebuilding and also that it's fireproof.

We're positive. Or the house is, anyway. We considered sneaking away in the dead of night and never coming back, but jettisoned that for the much less stressful complete emptying of the house while the vents are sealed, carpets are removed, the offending substance is removed along with the floor and/or subfloor, and then the floors are replaced and the whole thing is cleaned and sterilized. Oh, and also? Everyone involved has to sign waivers so if they develop symptoms of exposure to the substance in twenty years they can't SUE us.

Kill me NOW.

So yes, we are now entering the wormhole. Although what M and I are MOST dreading is the relatively mundane moving of boxes--everything we own has to go into a pod or a sealed room. UGHHH. I am SO SICK of moving (2008--we moved two households. 2009--we moved M's mom's household. 2010--apparently we are moving OUR household. Goal for 2011--NO MOVING ANYONE).

Demolition Derby

So! We are officially down to the studs. Some stop action photography:

Day 0:
Day 1:

Day 2:
Day 3 (or so):
Helen is standing approximately where the kitchen used to be.

We've started on the journey to the new kitchen. Somewhere in the mists of the future lie the ability to wash our dishes in hot water at a sink, fill the dishwasher, and stand at the kitchen counter making a pie that we can put in our own oven. In the meantime, we're on the hot & crowded 24-hour flight to Guam. Or maybe the four-month journey in the hold of the steamer.

Two more things

1. Today was Helen's first day of school. She was beyond excited (I was beyond excited, even though I'm not convinced it's THAT big a milestone; the transition to middle school looms larger right now. Or maybe that's just first child bias). Both kids are starting to devolve a little from "excited" to "violently grumpy." Although, thanks to a house filled with plastic sheeting and drywall dust, I'm having a lot of luck in farming them out for playdates and currently I am in the house ALONE. (Someday soon it will be payback time, and I have a feeling I'd better start thinking of favors to do NOW.)

2. I met Jess today! She's just as beautiful and sensible as she appears in her blog.

I also went for a hike today, at a state park out on the plains that I'd never been to before. Tomorrow I go back to work. I don't dread going back to work, exactly, but that just seems like another person, that self of mine who gets up early and goes for a run and packs a lunch and gets in the car to drive to work. (And that self's life is not exactly exciting. Nor is it leisurely, which is what I crave right now, alas.)

The idea of routine is appealing, however. We've reached the point of no return in the renovation: our drywall is gone. The front of our house looks like a barn, with pink panther fiberglass batts in place of stalls, and a smell of dust and mold instead of straw and manure. I have this naive belief that if I can just cobble together some kind of routine I can ride out all the dust and disruption with smiling equanimity.